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Top 10 greatest tactical and strategic masterpieces.

Er....i'm really sry about writing the huns..that was a rubbish mistake.More like nomadic steppe tribes,i had read in a documentary 'similar to the huns that plagued the roman empire 'and that somehow stayed in my mind.As it is i'm a little short on chinese military history as i admitted earlier.Apologies.
As for the incident i meant the deserting of the walls and the opening of its gates by Wu sangyui to the manchus,thus dooming the empire in 1644.

@saad4566666

Please get ur facts straight.....this was hardly the first application of trenches being used.

If ur saying this was done far before the westerners u are wrong.
The romans regularly dug trenches,and used them to win victories.
Examples

Battle of charonea - sulla crushes a mithridatic army
Battle of orchomenus.
Battle of alesia[in conjunction with ditches and other field fortifications]
Battle of Dara.


As for the rest of ur post i found it perplexing...who's paranoia?
U say u took european history way back and yet seem to be ignorant on roman battle tactics...?
Who and why will start a flame war ?U refer to a book?elaborate?

As to the battle of trench..it was more like a siege.It was siege defense ingenously and very well defended..but we are here dealing with battles my friend...not sieges.

As for ur post no offense but for the most part i didn't understand who ur ire was directed at?
 
Excellent list, now lets look at some of Germany's brilliance in land warfare.

Love these, but watch out for the pedantic whines. See below.

First, a whine in general: please can you put them in chronological order, even if you don't put the dates?


Battle of Gazala - Example of Rommel's tactical brilliance. An attack on the North followed immediately by an attack on the South in an outflanking manoeuvre, one can only expect something like this from Rommel.
Truly so. Without invidious comparison, you might like to look up what Eftekhar did in 71. I think you'll be surprised; the same tactics, in miniature.

Battle of Sedan - The Germans manage to advance through the Meuse, protect their rear, trap the Allied strongest armies and advance to the English Channel unchallenged. Simply a master stroke by the Germans, after this it was only mop up.
You do realise that those of us who are more than a century old keep thinking you mean Sedan 1871? You do realise that in some ways, that complex of battles, run by Helmut Moltke the elder by remote control, is arguably among the best of breed?

Battle of Kiev - This was the classic example of double envelopment, they trapped 5 Russian Armies.
Good one. What the Soviet Russians did later - push Austerlitz on this one, he's good about the Great Patriotic War - was another story, but boy, what a story!

Battle of Tannenberg - The Germans manage to outmanoeuvre numerically superior Russians without much contact, sheer brilliance. After this battle, the Russians were on the defence throughout the war.
Why does everyone make the exact same spelling mistake about this battle?
Anyway, while it is in my top list as well, what's always worried me is whether it could really be called tactically brilliant.


Well about the tactics and strategy thing joe has alreday more or less answered it,but to clarify.

By Tactics i meant the brilliant use of whatever resources at ur disposal in A BATTLE.

By strategy it can be brilliant logistics,superb manuevering whatver it takes to win with a heavy priority on manuevering...as that is typically the hallmark of great generals and lowest on bribing or defecting enemy commanders. Yessirree, Bob, all that takes place BEFORE the battle.


Now onto my list.

Campaigns.

1.Blitzkreig 1940 Fall of france.

The Quintessential campaign of modern warfare.

2.Campaign of 1805

Napoleon's greatest campaign,starting with the superb manuevre at ulm,culminating at austerlitz,with 200000 men napoleon defaets the allied coalition total strength of more than 400000.

3.Alexander's persian campaign.

The logistical approach and the superb manuevering with sieges at halicarnassus,and 3 great battles culminating at gaugamela.


4.Caesar's gallic campaign

The campaign that defined caesar.

5.Hannibal's italian campaign

3 great victories,17 yrs on roman soil totally outnumbered yet undefeated.Had he siege engines rome would be a footnote in history.

6..Khalid ibn al walid's campaign against the byzantine empire

The campaign that made islam into a game changer in asia.

7.Napoleon's italian campaign 1796

The ever outnumbered bonaparte in his first and one of the most brilliant campaigns,centred around mantua with great battles at rivoli,arcola,castiglione,bassano.

8.Mongol campaign against eastern europe

Subotai's trademark campaign.This could be much higher i just can't find what to replace.

9.The seven years war

Frederick's brilliant defense of prussia.

10.The vietnamese war

Vo nguyen giap and his superb use of guerilla tactics.The greatest assymetrical warfare campaign in history.

After this, I am definitely not opening my mouth on campaigns.

Superb list, brilliant reasoning. I could quibble with the order; as you said, Subotai's campaign begs the question.


Probables.

11.Gustavas adolphus campaign in northern germany.

12.Mongol campaign of china.

13.Napoleon.s campaign of 1806.17 day destruction of prussia.

14.Moltke's campaign of 1871.The campaign that shaped ww1 and proved the age of railways had arrived.

15.Wellington's peninsular campaign.The spanish ulcer,its comes late because it wouldn't have succeeded without many factors that were there to aid it,spanish guerilla resistance and supply of information on french movements.Huge french logistical problems.It could be higher though about 10-11.

16.Marlbrough's brilliant campaign in central europe.
This too i consider more or less on par with adolphus's campaign so could be higher.

Let me say this before anyone else does: you de man!

other than these...saladin's campaign comes to mind.

feel free to add the last 3.

battle will post soon.

@wall thing.........Fixed fortifications are monuments to human stupidity - napoleon bonaparte. Also sometimes attributed to helmuth moltke the elder.
Though the great wall did succeed partly in warding of the huns...the chinese emperor would have been better off creating a army with that expense,as i remember the great wall fell when the defenders deserted and surrendered without even fighting...proving right the proverb a wall is only as good as the man behind it.The romans used walls to deadly effect,but only as long as its infantry remained world class..when they declined not all the walls could wrad of the barbarian invasions.
Same for the french army and its maginot line.

Onto battles,this is a real problem for me as there are so many.

However i did make a list. Just for fun, I've put a star next to my own picks.

1.Cannae*

THE cannae,every generals wet dream from the day it was fought.

2.Austerlitz*

Deception,outnumbered,total battlefield mastery ,manuevre,surprise,
second greatest in my book.

3.Pharsalus.

Caesar's greatest victory.

4.Battle of walaja

Khalid ibn al waleed's double envelopment.Superb victory.

5.Battle of gaugamela*.

Alexander's greatest victory.

6.Leuctra*

The first oblique angle victory.

7.Sedan.

The original german kesselschacht battle.

8.alesia

Caesar's great use of circumvillation.I kept off sieges, because there were so many of them, and so disputable.

9.yamrouk Yarmouk?

Khalid ibn al waleed's superb use of cavalry to gain local superiority at all points of importance and defeating the numerically larger enemy in detail.

10.Mohi*

subotai's great victory.

11.Trasimene

greatest ambush in military history.


Differences:
Pharsalus,
Walaja,
Sedan,
Alesia,
Yarmouk;

I had suggested
Dara,
Breitenfeld,
Blenheim,
Rossbach and
Narva.


For extended possibles.

My choices

Battle of fraustadt.Another of the few classic examples of a deliberate double envelopment.Swedish victory.
A nice surprise; a relatively less-known Swedish battle.

Battle of blenheim.Marlbrough's best.On my first list!

Battle of rivoli.The most brilliant victory of the italian campaign Best of the Young Napoleon (before Egypt).

Battle of dresden.Brilliant use of the counterattack flanking manuevre by napoleon with massive allied casualities.I REALLY don't know; it was a scrappy, messy battle, more a battle of attrition than a battle of manoeuvre. My personal two cents, of course.

Battle of breitenfield.Gustavas adolphus signature victory.Yes! And Leuthen?

Battle of freidland,napoleon's great victory over russia. Noooooooo. Another, like Leipzig and Dresden, from the tired, post-Austerlitz Napoleon.

Battle of hydaspes,tactically one of alexander's best.I strongly doubt the authenticity of this battle. There is enough evidence to show that things may not have gone as, for instance, Arrian reported the matter. Alexander had not till date spared the life of a single king opposing him; his magnanimity in this single case is suspicious. The behaviour of the old troopers is significant. Finally, it is bizarre that Alexander should have given away the lands of an allied king, Ambhi, to a defeated king, Paurava. On balance, I strongly suspect the authenticity of the reporting. The incredibly clever bits about the distractions at the original crossing, the midnight march, the river-crossing using the mid-river island, the final battle are all fine, but this was not one of Alexander's Persian battles; if anything, it was one of his hill-fort battles. Let me explain.

The Alexandrian formation was not accidental, it was not an act of genius by Philip II; it was an evolution. It was evolved to solve two military problems: Greek hoplites meeting each other; Greek hoplites meeting Persian massed levies. It had a specific technical function for each of its parts, and none of these technical functions were used in this battle.

To begin with, the Greek hoplite vs. hoplite problem.

The Greeks found early on that two hoplite armies face to face and of roughly equal numbers had little advantage over one another. The Spartans, being fitter and stronger than the rest, enjoyed the same advantages over the other Greeks as the forward pack of the English Rugby team would have over a Calcutta Police side. That gave them a huge advantage over the others, and until the strange affair on the island of Sphakteria, nobody beat a Spartan. Sometime after the Peloponnesian War, which ended in 404 BC, to be precise, after their revolt against the Spartans and the Spartan party in Thebes in 378 BC, Epaminondas (born c. 418 BC) brought about a change in tactics which proved decisive. The first trial at Leuktra (371 BC) was decisive; the Thebans/ Boiotians won a great victory. In a nutshell, instead of two heaving, grunting masses straining for an advantage, the Thebans greatly strengthened one wing and burst through by sheer force on that wing. The Macedonians adopted this, and also lengthened the spear, adopting the 20 ft sarissa pike. Before we come to the rest of the Macedonian formation, let us see what the Persian problem was.

The Greek hoplite first encountered the Persian levy army when the Persian empire was busy overrunning the Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor. On the relative flat plains of Anatolia, the large numbers of the Persians allowed them to cover both sides of the Greek line, and to simply envelop it by numbers. Second, the Persians had cavalry; although many of the Greek cities had cavalry contingents, manned by the richer class of citizen, the Greek topography didn't allow the luxury of building a mounted contingent. There was simply insufficient space for stud farms and horse-breeding. Only Thessaly and the northern plains had horse-breeding and were known as being strong in cavalry. These areas mostly went under Persian control pretty early in each invasion, and the Greeks fought with vestigial cavalry on most occasions. The results were clear; at Marathon, they blocked off the passes, held back, and attacked only when the Persians re-embarked their cavalry. At Plataia, they held back, hoping that the Persians would attack their position on the high slopes of the hill on which the city was built. This did not happen; they marched to a forward position, and still nothing happened, other than painful cavalry raids on their positions, so they planned a retreat to their older positions. The Persians, mistaking this planned retirement for a move to run from the battlefield, attacked, giving the Greeks exactly the opportunity they wanted, where they wanted it, on the slopes, the Persians climbing, the Greeks above them. When the Greek armoured infantry met the thinly-armed Persian infantry, the issue was never in doubt.

So when they could, the Greeks avoided battle; they avoided exposure to enemy cavalry, and they avoided charges except over the last 200 yards, within arrowshot.

In response to this, the Macedonians adapted their phalanx to allow massed cavalry attack at one point of the long enemy line, assault infantry to exploit the cavalry breakthrough, and a massed phalanx to pin down the rest of the enemy line. The armour was modified and made much lighter, allowing the army to march at a much higher speed. This is what happened in the classic battles against the Persians.

The point of all this: which part of the Macedonian formation came in useful against the Indian formation?

First, the horse-archer attack on the Indian left flank cavalry. Horse-archers? Where did they figure ever before? Did Alexander use formations outside the Macedonian classic elements in any other battle? Did he, in short, innovate in terms of formation or new arms ever before?

Second, the Indian right flank cavalry galloped to the rescue of the beleaguered right flank. Quite possible.

Third, without the cavalry cover, Koinos' cavalry found the Indian rear quite exposed and pressed home its charges. This is a new development. There is nothing wrong with a tactical innovation; it is just that this battle is full of them, and it is the battle which is least authenticated.

Fourth, the Indian collapse is supposed to be due to their attempts to face both sides, form a double phalanx, which proved to be too
difficult to execute in the teeth of enemy attack. Quite possible, but was it within the realms of probability?

So what did we see? The elite cavalry, the elite Companion infantry, the Macedonian phalanx, the light cavalry: how were they engaged? None of what was done earlier:
  • a frontal attack with the elite cavalry: did not happen;
  • exploitation by the elite infantry: not attempted, since there was no breach in the enemy line to break through;
  • follow-up and break-through by the remaining elements, including the phalanx engaged in pinning down the rest of the forces: did not happen;

Instead we have
  • a flank attack by mounted archers;
  • an attack on the rear of the enemy line by a cavalry detachment;
  • a general attack by both sections of the enveloping forces on the pinned-down Indian line;
My conclusion from this is that Alexander may have attempted innovations and tactical departures from the usual pattern of set-piece battles that his veterans were familiar with. He may have worked this out due to the presence of an unknown factor, the war-elephants. It is probable that while the veterans would have executed a normal Companion cavalry + Companion infantry + Phalanx infantry attack with practised ease, they fumbled this new plan. They fumbled because they were at the end of their endurance; because they had not fought set-piece battles since Gaugamela, and had spent their time in between on storming hill-forts, a completely different kind of battle. They fumbled because this was not a manoeuvre or a set of moves which they were familiar with, or had worked out on drills.

Is there any other evidence? If the Indian formation had not been effective, it would not have been adopted extensive throughout the Hellenistic world: by the Diadochi, through the Sandrocottus/Chandragupta gift of 300 elephants to Seleukos, through Demeter of Macedonia to his brother-in-law, Pyrrhus of Epirus, through Pyrrhus of Epirus to Hannibal, the great enemy of Rome. Only a successful idea would be adopted, surely. Does it need more than this rage for elephants to point to us that Hydaspes was at best a draw?

But what about Austerlitz' original point that this was a brilliant tactical battle? If this was in fact what happened, and if Greek and Roman propaganda did not distort the reality and bring in incorrect reports of an outstanding success, if there was no embroidering of the facts, we may conclude that Alexander came out with brilliant battle planning, the grand tactics part of it, and with a series of truly outstanding manoeuvres, which deserved a better fate than the draw which I suggest actually happened. That too because he was dealing with an exhausted force, which had reached the end of its tether. It could not go forward another step; the thought of an emperor behind this king of a small marcher kingdom filled their hearts with despair, and they even turned against their beloved king and refused to listen to his pleas for more.


Battle of hohenfreidberg.Greatest victory of the war of austrian succesion. Agreed, although all the victories by Frederick were pretty hot.

Battle of leuthen.Greatest victory of the seven yrs war.Noooo; you left out my favourite, Rossbach. Quite honestly, Rossbach was a brilliant cavalry battle. You're prejudiced, Austerlitz!

h.mention;Battle of ramillies/battle of salamancaTesting us, right? Lepanto? St. Vincent? Trafalgar? Tsushima? Hint, hint./battle of aurestadt.If it is Auerstadt you have in mind, that is one of the middle Napoleon, tired-old-man battles. I don't know; it is with a sinking feeling that one studies these later battles and realises that Napoleon was burning out rapidly.

Now i have deliberately left out 20th century battles as battles ceased to be battles and more resembled operations due to the numbers available from ww1 onwards.
So stalingrad,kharkov,kiev.....are not on the list.

sorry i think i had too much cafeeine. i mean joe not jon. i apologise wholeheartedly. by the way great choices.
I WAS JUST KIDDING, FOR HEAVENS' SAKES; DON'T TAKE EVERY JOKEY BIT SERIOUSLY. CHILL, COMRADE; NO OFFENCE GIVEN, NONE TAKEN.
 
Pfffft didn't even work a lot of the time. lol.
Great idea austerlitz and great posts Joe.

@CardSharp
@Austerlitz

I wish we could go back to the earlier thread and finish it off for the sake of good order. In addition, I have been developing a theory about the development of military tactics, which closely relates military problems in one era with their tactical solutions in the next. Some of this has been published in private mail; more is due, but the outline in my post here (referring to Alexander and the Macedonian formation) is the framework on which I will build.

Please confirm, btw, that you are receiving personal emails.

It seems that there is an uninterrupted chain of challenge and response right from the Greek hoplites until modern times. I would like to lay out the logical development and get your comments on those.

Regards,
 
Ok,sry yeah i left out rossbach..thatw as a mistake.

On adolphus u mean lutzen?i think that was too bloody and inconclusive to be a great victory.
Blenheim admittedly should be in the top 10.

Now onto aurestadt is not a napoleonic battle at all...it is fought by davout.Jena is napoleon's battle..he had much more men in that battle against a secondary prussian army so not a great victory even if the statistics were a total rout on teh prussian side.And this isn't tired napoleon...1806 campaign is napoleon at his very peak...the decline begins after eylau.

No lepanto/salamis/trafalgar as they are naval encounters.

Dresden i added because though outnumbered it was a briliantly conducted defense followed by as wift attack that caused like 400000 allied losses to french 10000...the numbers alone were quite decisive even though purely on manuevering u are right not on par with his other battles.But still i would reckon top 25 for sure.

Come now freidland WAS a great victory it killed the fourth coalition...ur being too pessimistic here.
Also i have not been able to add the six days campaign unable to decide whether to add it to battle or campaign it is imo after austerlitz napoleon's best.It would definitely be top 10 in whatevr category..but it doesn't fit into either.Would be best described as operations.

Great piece on hydaspes.....but one thing is problematic the results show porus lost most of his army so a draw is perhaps a little controversial.
I think the massive macedonian losses were mostly the cause of repeated suicidal indian elephant charges.Yes i think it was not a set piece battle..or didn't go the way alexander wanted it to go....but it was a macedonian victory in the end.
Here a great video on hydaspes.
Battle of Hydaspes River, 326 BC » The Art of Battle
Check this video and page.The comments are somewhat similar to urs so ur not the only one with'doubts'.Also check that site it is downright awesome...if u haven't already.
I judged my best battles partly on their being exmpales of one or more of the seven basic manuevres of battle.
 
The seven basic manuevres of battle.then i explain which battles i have put in my list as examples of each type.


Tactics Tutorial » The Art of Battle

Go to this page for the illustrations..very good site.

Now on my list..

Cannae is of course the quintiessential double envelopment manuevre.
Walaja is a variation of the double envelopment which was aided by poor recon and fortunate terrain but again the only other example of a 'true' double envelopment.Considered the most difficult manuevre in battle when naumbers are at parity or lower.

Pharsalus is the best example of a single flank attack.

Sedan and ulm are the best examples of an indirect approach.France 1940 is a combination of indirect approach and double envelopment in a strategic level.

Dresden is a prime example of attack from a defensive position move.

Blenheim is the great example of penetration of the centre,gaugamela is a modified version of this with elemnets of the oblique order included.

All of fredericks' battles and leuctra are oblique order victories.

Trasimene is the greatest ambush.

The battle of charonea won by philip 2 is a example of a feigned withdrawal followed by pentration of the centre.

The battle of freidland is an example of single flank attack.

continued..
 
some people here just post there people/religion leaders the indian members here seem to be more unbiased

anyway , hannibal comes to mind what about Soviet invasion of Manchuria?

im sure the mongols did great 2
 
I will confine myself only to the battle of the Hydaspes, as the others need a very detailed response - where they need a response; in most cases, my prefererence follows your judgement very closely.

Great piece on hydaspes.....but one thing is problematic the results show porus lost most of his army so a draw is perhaps a little controversial.

If you notice, one of the circumstances that leads to discomfort about this battle and its outcome is that it was entirely reported by historians bent on glorifying Alexander and building his myth. If you wish, I could explain the sources from which each of the extant five took their information, and pull out for detailed examination their tendency to bias.

Showing that Porus lost most of his army is a necessary condition to show that he lost the battle. This interpretation is not surprising; in previous cases, the casualties happened not during the battle, but during the chase thereafter; this will be apparent in the accounts of all three of the Persian battles that Alexander fought - Granicus, Issus and Gaugamela.

Point: How strange is it that in three battles out of four, three that were fought with the Macedonians at the peak of their capability, when they were fresh from their exploits in Greece itself, and in Asia Minor, the casualty rate within the battle was low, after the battle, in the exploitation when the enemy was fleeing in completely disorganised fashion, it was high, but in Hydaspes, we are asked to believe that the battle-field casualties were high, yet the ferocious execution that normally followed, the relentless cavalry pursuit, did not happen. In other words, battlefield casualties were higher than he had suffered ever before, casualties in the follow-up were negligible, but this was a victory?


I think the massive macedonian losses were mostly the cause of repeated suicidal indian elephant charges.

Possibly; when it is suspected that a source is biased in one direction, it is logical to treat facts and information presented in the direction of that bias with healthy scepticism. Similarly, facts and information following an opposite trend may be accepted as being more likely to have happened than the other.


Yes i think it was not a set piece battle..or didn't go the way alexander wanted it to go....but it was a macedonian victory in the end.

My interpretation is that this battle featured new tactics by Alexander; he badly wanted a quick decisive close, and a famous victory. His problem was that this was a different kind of set-piece battle, not the type that he had faced thrice before. The elephants were an imponderable; he had no precedent to deal with it, no formation designed to combat elephants.

It seems to be that he solved the problem of the elephants partly by ad hoc infantry tactics, partly by the outflanking cavalry charge aimed at the Indian formations rear echelons.

It may be interesting to note that this was the first set-piece battle where he used Scythian mounted archers. Their punishing attacks on the flanks were part of the new Alexander, but we shall never know except through the classic five authorities what their final impact was. The impact may have been less than effective.

It is noteworthy that what the Diadochi took away with them as bitter memories and what they implemented in their orders of battle was the war-elephant. This influence persisted through the period till as late as Pyrrhus' campaign in Italy, in the three battles that he fought with the Romans in Magna Graecia, Heraclea, Asculum and Benevento. Hannibal, having possibly read Pyrrhus' manuals on war, and rating Pyrrhus even higher than Alexander, obviously borrowed his own war-elephants arm from his mentor's formation.

I suggest that no victorious army emulates its beaten counterpart so closely. This is not a case of the Coldstream Guards adopting the bearskin shakos of the Imperial Guard, this is a case of the Germans in 1871 discarding their methods and adopting that of the French Army.

Here a great video on hydaspes.
Battle of Hydaspes River, 326 BC » The Art of Battle
Check this video and page.The comments are somewhat similar to urs so ur not the only one with'doubts'.Also check that site it is downright awesome...if u haven't already.
I judged my best battles partly on their being exmpales of one or more of the seven basic manuevres of battle.
 
some people here just post there people/religion leaders the indian members here seem to be more unbiased

anyway , hannibal comes to mind what about Soviet invasion of Manchuria?

im sure the mongols did great 2

If you look at post 20 immediately before yours, you will find confirmation from another knowledgeable person that Hannibal was hot stuff. That poster, Austerlitz, has listed two of Hannibal's battles, Cannae and Trasimene, as classics. It is difficult to disagree with that.

About the Mongols, both Chengiz himself, and his brilliant general, Subotai, have been mentioned in the correspondence. In general, the commanders of the Islamic Conquest should be mentioned as well: the difficulty is that their names are usually proposed by those who do not have the slightest clue about why those commanders prevailed. Instead, we get strange sentences thoroughly steeped in religious enthusiam and with an absence of any analytical logic.

Why don't you fill out your own list of ten? That might be fun to discuss.
 
Brilliant posts! Thanks. Why no one thanked it yet? :undecided:

I think most people posting would like to stick to one-liners of the "You stupid Indians! We have nothing to do with you and never did. We have existed for (fill in the number of millennia of choice here) and don't need you telling us what is our culture. Everything in the Indus Valley is our culture, and it arose by itself, grew into the glorious religion that we brought along, and gave ourselves, so it's cool."

Doesn't leave much time for analysis or for military history. But then, that kind of rabid fanboy never cared for this dull stuff anyway.

I have a brilliant article by Major Amin on the martial races of India. Think I'd get a reaction if I got the Major's permission and posted it? No way, Jose; it'd be the loser of the century, because it doesn't say what the fanboy wants it to say.
 
If it hasn't been mentioned yet, please add Sherman's "March to the Sea" into the list of strategic masterpieces.

Also, can you please PM me the Major's article, Joe? I'm a sucker for anything related to Indian history.
 
I think most people posting would like to stick to one-liners of the "You stupid Indians! We have nothing to do with you and never did. We have existed for (fill in the number of millennia of choice here) and don't need you telling us what is our culture. Everything in the Indus Valley is our culture, and it arose by itself, grew into the glorious religion that we brought along, and gave ourselves, so it's cool."

Doesn't leave much time for analysis or for military history. But then, that kind of rabid fanboy never cared for this dull stuff anyway.

I have a brilliant article by Major Amin on the martial races of India. Think I'd get a reaction if I got the Major's permission and posted it? No way, Jose; it'd be the loser of the century, because it doesn't say what the fanboy wants it to say.

Yes Joe, like a great deal of stuff that Maj. A.H. Amin has written, its a great exposition. Has appeared in Cataphract and numerous other places, but not many people like to read it. Pity.
 
Yes Joe, like a great deal of stuff that Maj. A.H. Amin has written, its a great exposition. Has appeared in Cataphract and numerous other places, but not many people like to read it. Pity.

In fact, I've been grubbing around and have scads more information on India-China 62 (details of the battle at Walong, of Chushul and so on; should I put it up there?
 
In fact, I've been grubbing around and have scads more information on India-China 62 (details of the battle at Walong, of Chushul and so on; should I put it up there?

Ah,so.
Please do. Dumbo that i am, never thought of it. That would indeed be great.
 
I think most people posting would like to stick to one-liners of the "You stupid Indians! We have nothing to do with you and never did. We have existed for (fill in the number of millennia of choice here) and don't need you telling us what is our culture. Everything in the Indus Valley is our culture, and it arose by itself, grew into the glorious religion that we brought along, and gave ourselves, so it's cool."


:lol::lol::lol::lol:
'500' pushed a thanx button and added onliner and here you go. Charge of light brigade.
Major contributors of this discussion your self and AUSTERLITZ did not pushed the thanked button and so similarly other Indian members, much more in numbers than Pakistanis. Your 'assault on center' on Pakistanis in the context of thread is bit funny, or I have missed something. These "20's of" threads don't have any thing except hydaspes relating to sub-continent.
Nevertheless, great observations on Hydaspes Battle, but points raised may have much simpler explanations. Firstly Macedonian Battle Plan, in simple terms, holding and pushing/putting pressure on enemy formations by Phalanx and breaking destroying the enemy flank (right or left) by cavalry charge, thus gave enough room (part of tactical planning of Alexander the Great, in my opinion) to enemy to run away. then pursuits followed, end of the game. Persian battles shows the results.
At, Hydaspes, no exist was available after envelopment, one side was completely bared by river, King Porus was much more resilient and held his ground to the last(unlike Persian king), so the heavy losses to Alexander army are not hard to imagine. Draw in this situation is highly unlikely and can be only achieved if Porus army held up till sunset and survived to fight another day, which I infer was not the case.
 

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